Rico’s Recent Comments

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  Go ask Alice

  A couple of things I found noteworthy in Hirsh's piece:
  The first is one Dave mentioned in his post but for somewhat different reasons. Hirsh said, "Now it's McCain who has laid out a clear -- if questionably feasible -- energy vision for the future." Uh... if it's questionable how is it a clear vision? Clearly questionable maybe. I seem to recall someone else mentioning "clear vision" a lot during the campaign four years ago -- one that was equally questionable at the time and proven profoundly myopic thereafter. Maybe we should call it the Mr. Magoo energy policy. Magoo was equally certain of himself for all the wrong reasons. The only problem with that idea is, only those around McCain's age are likely to understand the reference. Then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

  The other is this: Hirsh says, "True, Obama has called for an investment of $150 billion over 10 years, dwarfing McCain's incentive plan..." What incentive plan? Whatever it is, does it include nuclear power? Apparently not, because if that idea was included it wouldn't be McCain's plan that was "dwarfed".

  Despite the "Through the Lookingglass" tone of Hirsh's article though, unfortunately I think he gets one very important thing right: that's what campaigns are. Most people are as confused as Alice. And that, I think, is an important thing to keep in mind.On Newsweek political journalist transcribes McCain campaign spin on energy posted 1 year, 4 months ago 4 Responses

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  California already did.

  California got rid of their "old coal plants" long ago. However, CA currently does import a substantial portion of their utility power from coal-fired plants in neighboring states. But they're working to eliminate that as well.
  On California plans to cut 169 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020 posted 1 year, 4 months ago 7 Responses

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  Color me confused

  jromm: Confused commenters

  While I'm sure all of us commenters appreciate how busy your schedule is. And while I'm also sure that at least many of us, to one extent or another, defer to your superior knowledge and/or experience, I'm equally sure that calling all of us "confused" with no attempt at subtlety or distinction doesn't help your cause much.

  I'm trying hard to get in your camp, and probably will end up there (more or less), but you're not making it any easier. There's no sense in pissing people off for no reason, is there? I'm just saying.On Examining the IPCC's 'portfolio of technologies' posted 1 year, 7 months ago 19 Responses

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  Nuclear?

  bigTom, I'm ambivalent to nuclear. Other than the obvious (the waste and security issues) part of the reason is the cost and the availability of critical components, like containment vessels. Those variables have to be projected over very long construction times. Meanwhile, have you looked into the potential of geothermal? In particular I mean "hot rock" (EGS) geothermal, or variants on the theme more applicable to "traditional" sites. Granted, hot rock geothermal is one of those technologies that require more R&D. But the level of R&D funding has thus far been pretty pathetic, so it's hard to tell how well better funding would pay off. But according to this study, the potential bang for the buck could be enormous.

  I honestly don't understand why EGS is not more discussed and/or pushed more aggressively. Am I missing something? Can anyone help?On Examining the IPCC's 'portfolio of technologies' posted 1 year, 7 months ago 19 Responses

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  Capacity

  In addition to making distinctions between "nameplate capacity" and "capacity factor" (which I agree is an important distinction), there is also the need to consider how much of the "capacity factor" meaningfully contributes to the grid load at any point in time. For lack of a better term, that's what I would call "effective capacity". For example, though a nuclear (or hydroelectric) plant can operate at near capacity essentially all the time, load requirements are variable over time. So either you have another source of dispatchable power and use the nuclear or hydroelectric plant to satisfy base load only, or its "effective capacity" will be lower than its "capacity factor". On the other hand, since solar capacity follows load requirements pretty well (and in the case of solar thermal, even better if it has heat storage), its "effective capacity" remains close to its "capacity factor".

  Unfortunately, I don't know of any source of "effective capacity" statistics. But this paper discusses the issue with respect to solar thermal. Another point is that when (let's hope it's not "if") smart grid technology is meaningfully deployed, our current conceptions of "peak" and "off-peak" load distributions are likely to change dramatically. It seems to me that smart grid deployment is the very first rate-limiting step in our quest to make "unreliable" renewable power sources optimal.On Examining the IPCC's 'portfolio of technologies' posted 1 year, 7 months ago 19 Responses